CHAPTER VII.
Elizabeth sat by Miss Baring's bedside the following day.
"I am not going to rise," she said; "my cough is too troublesome, and all my limbs ache."
"It was imprudent of you sitting out so late in the forest. I wonder your brother allowed it. If I had been near you I should have remonstrated."
"Ah! you were too much engrossed." This was said, in a low but sharp voice, between her fits of coughing.
"Yes, I was anxious to finish my last study of rock, I confess. But Mr. Baring being so near you———"
"Oh! Alaric was engrossed too, for that matter."
"When one is sketching, one does not think, does one?"
"No; it was my own case. But though you were not close to me, I could not have gone away and left you alone in the forest."
"I was not alone. Mr. George was with me."
"A nice protector! A man who was a stranger to you five days ago, and whom you know absolutely nothing of!"
"What does one know of any one?—of any man, I mean?"
